Publications

We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) scheme for feedback quantum control within the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). We reformulate the QAOA variational minimization as a learning task, where an RL agent chooses the control parameters for the unitaries, given partial information on the system. Such an RL scheme finds a policy converging to the optimal adiabatic solution of the quantum Ising chain that can also be successfully transferred between systems with different sizes, even in the presence of disorder. This allows for immediate experimental verification of our proposal on more complicated models: The RL agent is trained on a small control system, simulated on classical hardware, and then tested on a larger physical sample.

Accurate and predictive computations of the quantum-mechanical behavior of many interacting electrons in realistic atomic environments are critical for the theoretical design of materials with desired properties, and they require solving the grand-challenge problem of the many-electron Schrödinger equation. An infinite chain of equispaced hydrogen atoms is perhaps the simplest realistic model for a bulk material, embodying several central themes of modern condensed-matter physics and chemistry while retaining a connection to the paradigmatic Hubbard model. Here, we report a combined application of cutting-edge computational methods to determine the properties of the hydrogen chain in its quantum-mechanical ground state. Varying the separation between the nuclei leads to a rich phase diagram, including a Mott phase with quasi-long-range antiferromagnetic order, electron density dimerization with power-law correlations, an insulator-to-metal transition, and an intricate set of intertwined magnetic orders.

Despite the unquestionable empirical success of quantum theory, witnessed by the recent uprising of quantum technologies, the debate on how to reconcile the theory with the macroscopic classical world is still open. Spontaneous collapse models are one of the few testable solutions so far proposed. In particular, the continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) model has become subject of intense experimental research. Experiments looking for the universal force noise predicted by CSL in ultrasensitive mechanical resonators have recently set the strongest unambiguous bounds on CSL. Further improving these experiments by direct reduction of mechanical noise is technically challenging. Here, we implement a recently proposed alternative strategy that aims at enhancing the CSL noise by exploiting a multilayer test mass attached on a high quality factor microcantilever. The test mass is specifically designed to enhance the effect of CSL noise at the characteristic length rc=10-7 m. The measurements are in good agreement with pure thermal motion for temperatures down to 100 mK. From the absence of excess noise, we infer a new bound on the collapse rate at the characteristic length rc=10-7 m, which improves over previous mechanical experiments by more than 1 order of magnitude. Our results explicitly challenge a well-motivated region of the CSL parameter space proposed by Adler.

We investigate the crossover of the entanglement entropy toward its thermal value in nearly integrable systems. We employ equations-of-motion techniques to study the entanglement dynamics in a lattice model of weakly interacting spinless fermions after a quantum quench. For weak enough interactions we observe a two-step relaxation of the entanglement entropies of finite subsystems. Initially, the entropies follow a nearly integrable evolution, approaching the value predicted by the generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) of the unperturbed model. Then, they start a slow drift toward the thermal stationary value described by a standard Gibbs ensemble (GE). While the initial relaxation to the GGE is independent of the interaction, the slow drift from GGE to GE values happens on timescales proportional to the inverse interaction squared. For asymptotically large times and subsystem sizes the dynamics of the entropies can be predicted using a modified quasiparticle picture that keeps track of the evolution of the fermionic occupations caused by the integrability breaking. This picture gives a quantitative description of the results as long as the integrability-breaking timescale is much larger than the one associated with the (quasi)saturation to the GGE. In the opposite limit, the quasiparticle picture still provides the correct late-time behavior, but it underestimates the initial slope of the entanglement entropy.

We study a system of one-dimensional interacting quantum particles subjected to a time-periodic potential linear in space. After discussing the cases of driven one- A nd two-particle systems, we derive the analogous results for the many-particle case in the presence of a general interaction two-body potential and the corresponding Floquet Hamiltonian. When the undriven model is integrable, the Floquet Hamiltonian is shown to be integrable too. We determine the micromotion operator and the expression for a generic time evolved state of the system. We discuss various aspects of the dynamics of the system both at stroboscopic and intermediate times, in particular the motion of the center of mass of a generic wave packet and its spreading over time. We also discuss the case of accelerated motion of the center of mass, obtained when the integral of the coefficient strength of the linear potential on a time period is nonvanishing, and we show that the Floquet Hamiltonian gets in this case an additional static linear potential. We also discuss the application of the obtained results to the Lieb-Liniger model.

We provide a thorough characterisation of the zero-temperature one-particle density matrix of trapped interacting anyonic gases in one dimension, exploiting recent advances in the field theory description of spatially inhomogeneous quantum systems. We first revisit homogeneous anyonic gases with point-wise interactions. In the harmonic Luttinger liquid expansion of the one-particle density matrix for finite interaction strength, the non-universal field amplitudes were not yet known. We extract them from the Bethe Ansatz formula for the field form factors, providing an exact asymptotic expansion of this correlation function, thus extending the available results in the Tonks–Girardeau limit. Next, we analyse trapped gases with non-trivial density profiles. By applying recent analytic and numerical techniques for inhomogeneous Luttinger liquids, we provide exact expansions for the one-particle density matrix. We present our results for different confining potentials, highlighting the main differences with respect to bosonic gases.

The Heisenberg-Ising spin ladder is one of the few short-range models showing confinement of elementary excitations without the need of an external field, neither transverse nor longitudinal. This feature makes the model suitable for an experimental realization with ultracold atoms. In this paper, we combine analytic and numerical techniques to precisely characterize its spectrum in the regime of Hamiltonian parameters showing confinement. We find two kinds of particles, which we dub intrachain and interchain mesons, that correspond to bound states of kinks within the same chain or between different ones, respectively. The ultimate physical reasons leading to the existence of two families of mesons is a residual double degeneracy of the ground state: the two types of mesons interpolate either between the same vacuum (intrachain) or between the two different ones (interchain). While the intrachain mesons can also be qualitatively assessed through an effective mean field description and were previously known, the interchain ones are new and they represent general features of spin ladders with confinement.

Determining the phase diagram of systems consisting of smaller subsystems 'connected' via a tunable coupling is a challenging task relevant for a variety of physical settings. A general question is whether new phases, not present in the uncoupled limit, may arise. We use machine learning and a suitable quasidistance between different points of the phase diagram to study layered spin models, in which the spin variables constituting each of the uncoupled systems (to which we refer as layers) are coupled to each other via an interlayer coupling. In such systems, in general, composite order parameters involving spins of different layers may emerge as a consequence of the interlayer coupling. We focus on the layered Ising and Ashkin-Teller models as a paradigmatic case study, determining their phase diagram via the application of a machine learning algorithm to the Monte Carlo data. Remarkably our technique is able to correctly characterize all the system phases also in the case of hidden order parameters, i.e. order parameters whose expression in terms of the microscopic configurations would require additional preprocessing of the data fed to the algorithm. We correctly retrieve the three known phases of the Ashkin-Teller model with ferromagnetic couplings, including the phase described by a composite order parameter. For the bilayer and trilayer Ising models the phases we find are only the ferromagnetic and the paramagnetic ones. Within the approach we introduce, owing to the construction of convolutional neural networks, naturally suitable for layered image-like data with arbitrary number of layers, no preprocessing of the Monte Carlo data is needed, also with regard to its spatial structure. The physical meaning of our results is discussed and compared with analytical data, where available. Yet, the method can be used without any a priori knowledge of the phases one seeks to find and can be applied to other models and structures.

We develop a quantum many-body theory of the Bose-Hubbard model based on the canonical quantization of the action derived from a Gutzwiller mean-field ansatz. Our theory is a systematic generalization of the Bogoliubov theory of weakly interacting gases. The control parameter of the theory, defined as the zero point fluctuations on top of the Gutzwiller mean-field state, remains small in all regimes. The approach provides accurate results throughout the whole phase diagram, from the weakly to the strongly interacting superfluid and into the Mott insulating phase. As specific examples of application, we study the two-point correlation functions, the superfluid stiffness, and the density fluctuations, for which quantitative agreement with available quantum Monte Carlo data is found. In particular, the two different universality classes of the superfluid-insulator quantum phase transition at integer and noninteger filling are recovered.

We show how U(1) lattice gauge theories display key signatures of ergodicity breaking in the presence of a random charge background. We argue that, in such gauge theories, there is a cooperative effect of disorder and interactions in favoring ergodicity breaking: This is due to the confining nature of the Coulomb potential, which suppresses the number of available energy resonances at all distances. Such a cooperative mechanism reflects into very modest finite-volume effects: This allows us to draw a sharp boundary for the ergodic regime, and thus the breakdown of quantum chaos for sufficiently strong gauge couplings, at system sizes accessible via exact diagonalization. Our conclusions are independent on the value of a background topological angle, and are contrasted with a gauge theory with truncated Hilbert space, where instead we observe very strong finite-volume effects akin to those observed in spin chains.

The entanglement evolution after a quantum quench became one of the tools to distinguish integrable versus chaotic (non-integrable) quantum many-body dynamics. Following this line of thoughts, here we propose that the revivals in the entanglement entropy provide a finite-size diagnostic benchmark for the purpose. Indeed, integrable models display periodic revivals manifested in a dip in the block entanglement entropy in a finite system. On the other hand, in chaotic systems, initial correlations get dispersed in the global degrees of freedom (information scrambling) and such a dip is suppressed. We show that while for integrable systems the height of the dip of the entanglement of an interval of fixed length decays as a power law with the total system size, upon breaking integrability a much faster decay is observed, signalling strong scrambling. Our results are checked by exact numerical techniques in free-fermion and free-boson theories, and by time-dependent density matrix renormalisation group in interacting integrable and chaotic models.

We present a thorough analysis of the entanglement entropies related to different symmetry sectors of free quantum field theories (QFT) with an internal U(1) symmetry. We provide explicit analytic computations for the charged moments of Dirac and complex scalar fields in two spacetime dimensions, both in the massive and massless cases, using two different approaches. The first one is based on the replica trick, the computation of the partition function on Riemann surfaces with the insertion of a flux α, and the introduction of properly modified twist fields, whose two-point function directly gives the scaling limit of the charged moments. With the second method, the diagonalisation in replica space maps the problem to the computation of a partition function on a cut plane, that can be written exactly in terms of the solutions of non-linear differential equations of the Painlevé V type. Within this approach, we also derive an asymptotic expansion for the short and long distance behaviour of the charged moments. Finally, the Fourier transform provides the desired symmetry resolved entropies: at the leading order, they satisfy entanglement equipartition and we identify the subleading terms that break it. Our analytical findings are tested against exact numerical calculations in lattice models.

We report on the calculation of the symmetry resolved entanglement entropies in two-dimensional many-body systems of free bosons and fermions by dimensional reduction. When the subsystem is translational invariant in a transverse direction, this strategy allows us to reduce the initial two-dimensional problem into decoupled one-dimensional ones in a mixed space-momentum representation. While the idea straightforwardly applies to any dimension d, here we focus on the case d = 2 and derive explicit expressions for two lattice models possessing a U(1) symmetry, i.e., free non-relativistic massless fermions and free complex (massive and massless) bosons. Although our focus is on symmetry resolved entropies, some results for the total entanglement are also new. Our derivation gives a transparent understanding of the well known different behaviours between massless bosons and fermions in d 2: massless fermions presents logarithmic violation of the area which instead strictly hold for bosons, even massless. This is true both for the total and the symmetry resolved entropies. Interestingly, we find that the equipartition of entanglement into different symmetry sectors holds also in two dimensions at leading order in subsystem size; we identify for both systems the first term breaking it. All our findings are quantitatively tested against exact numerical calculations in lattice models for both bosons and fermions.

We show how to include the Jahn–Teller coupling of moiré phonons to the electrons in the continuum model formalism which describes small-angle twisted bilayer graphene. These phonons, which strongly couple to the valley degree of freedom, are able to open gaps at most integer fillings of the four flat bands around the charge neutrality point. Moreover, we derive the full quantum mechanical expression of the electron–phonon Hamiltonian, which may allow accessing phenomena such as the phonon-mediated superconductivity and the dynamical Jahn–Teller effect.

Abstract: Lattice gauge theories, which originated from particle physics in the context of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), provide an important intellectual stimulus to further develop quantum information technologies. While one long-term goal is the reliable quantum simulation of currently intractable aspects of QCD itself, lattice gauge theories also play an important role in condensed matter physics and in quantum information science. In this way, lattice gauge theories provide both motivation and a framework for interdisciplinary research towards the development of special purpose digital and analog quantum simulators, and ultimately of scalable universal quantum computers. In this manuscript, recent results and new tools from a quantum science approach to study lattice gauge theories are reviewed. Two new complementary approaches are discussed: first, tensor network methods are presented – a classical simulation approach – applied to the study of lattice gauge theories together with some results on Abelian and non-Abelian lattice gauge theories. Then, recent proposals for the implementation of lattice gauge theory quantum simulators in different quantum hardware are reported, e.g., trapped ions, Rydberg atoms, and superconducting circuits. Finally, the first proof-of-principle trapped ions experimental quantum simulations of the Schwinger model are reviewed. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].

Confinement of excitations induces quasilocalized dynamics in disorder-free isolated quantum many-body systems in one spatial dimension. This occurrence is signaled by severe suppression of quantum correlation spreading and of entanglement growth, long-time persistence of spatial inhomogeneities, and long-lived coherent oscillations of local observables. In this work, we present a unified understanding of these dramatic effects. The slow dynamical behavior is shown to be related to the Schwinger effect in quantum electrodynamics. We demonstrate that it is quantitatively captured for long-time scales by effective Hamiltonians exhibiting Stark localization of excitations and weak growth of the entanglement entropy for arbitrary coupling strength. This analysis explains the phenomenology of real-time string dynamics investigated in a number of lattice gauge theories, as well as the anomalous dynamics observed in quantum Ising chains after quenches. Our findings establish confinement as a robust mechanism for hindering the approach to equilibrium in translationally invariant quantum statistical systems with local interactions.

We study by a consistent mean-field scheme the role on the single- and two-particle properties of a local electron-electron repulsion in the Bernevig, Hughes, and Zhang model of a quantum spin Hall insulator. We find that the interaction fosters the intrusion between the topological and nontopological insulators of an insulating and magnetoelectric phase that breaks spontaneously inversion and time-reversal symmetries but not their product. The approach to this phase from both topological and nontopological sides is signaled by the softening of two exciton branches, i.e., whose binding energy reaches the gap value, that possess, in most cases, finite and opposite Chern numbers, thus allowing this phase to be regarded as a condensate of topological excitons. We also discuss how those excitons, and especially their surface counterparts, may influence the physical observables.

We theoretically investigate the thermoelectric transport through a circuit implementation of the three-channel charge Kondo model quantum simulator [Z. Iftikhar et al., Science 360, 1315 (2018)SCIEAS0036-807510.1126/science.aan5592]. The universal temperature scaling law of the Seebeck coefficient is computed perturbatively approaching the non-Fermi liquid strong coupling fixed point using the Abelian bosonization technique. The predicted T1/3logT scaling behavior of the thermoelectric power sheds light on the properties of Z3 emerging parafermions and gives access to exploring prefractionalized zero modes in the quantum transport experiments. We discuss a generalization of approach for investigating a multichannel Kondo problem with emergent ZN→ZM crossovers between "weak"non-Fermi liquid regimes corresponding to different low-temperature fixed points.

We study the out-of-equilibrium properties of a classical integrable non-relativistic theory, with a time evolution initially prepared with a finite energy density in the thermodynamic limit. The theory considered here is the Non-Linear Schrödinger equation which describes the dynamics of the one-dimensional interacting Bose gas in the regime of high occupation numbers. The main emphasis is on the determination of the latetime Generalised Gibbs Ensemble (GGE), which can be efficiently semi-numerically computed on arbitrary initial states, completely solving the famous quench problem in the classical regime. We take advantage of known results in the quantum model and the semiclassical limit to achieve new exact results for the momenta of the density operator on arbitrary GGEs, which we successfully compare with ab-initio numerical simulations. Furthermore, we determine the whole probability distribution of the density operator (full counting statistics), whose exact expression is still out of reach in the quantum model.